Page 11 - LatAmOil Week 08 2020
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Mexican law only permits presidents to serve for one six-year term, and Lopez Obrador took office in December 2018.
Shell Mexico won licences for nine deepwa- ter fields in 2014, when Lopez Obrador’s prede- cessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, was still in office. De la Fuente indicated that the company remained keen to explore these sites.
“We have almost 20,000 square km of acreage across all of our nine deep-water blocks in Mex- ico, which is one of Shell’s largest operated deep- water exploration positions globally,” he said.
To date, Shell has only drilled one deepwa- ter well in Mexican waters. Earlier this month, Mexico’s National Hydrocarbons Commission (known as CNH) gave it the green light to drill a second well at Max-1, an ultra-deepwater site.
The company will use La Muralla IV, a rig leased from the Mexican company Grupo R, for its deepwater drilling programme. “The con- tract will allow us to drill three deep-water wells with Grupo R, and it could be as many as eight, depending on how it evolves and what we find,” de la Fuente explained.
Stabilis Energy plans small-scale LNG production facility in Monterrey
HOUSTON-BASED Stabilis Energy has applied for a permit to build a small-scale gas liquefac- tion facility in the north-eastern Mexican city of Monterrey.
In a statement dated February 26, Stabilis said that the proposed facility would be built on an industrial property owned by affiliates of CryoMex Investment Group. Stabilis already has ties to CryoMex, a subsidiary of Mexico’s Grupo Clisa, as the two companies set up a joint venture last year. The joint venture’s mission is to invest in distributed gas production and distri- bution assets in Mexico.
The LNG plant will have two production trains, including one smaller unit capable of turning out 20,000 gallons per day (11,607 tonnes per year) of LNG and one larger unit with a capacity of 100,000 gallons per day (58,035 tpy). Stabilis hopes to start by launching the smaller production train, since it already owns this unit and can install it immediately. It would then build the larger train later, according to the plan it used to construct its facility in George West, a town in Texas.
The company is already working to secure
commitments from potential customers. According to the statement, it has signed a sup- ply contract with a Mexican company that may eventually take delivery of 25,000 gallons per day (14,509 tpy) and is in discussions with sev- eral other firms on similar deals.
Stabilis described the proposed construction site as advantageous. The proposed facility will have access to adequate supplies of electricity and natural gas and is close enough to major highways to make truck transportation of LNG possible, it said.
The company also said it hoped to complete the permitting process in about six to nine months. This would allow for construction to begin near the end of 2020, it reported.
Meanwhile, Stabilis hopes to establish a niche in the local gas market even before it fin- ishes construction. The company is already in a position to send LNG to Mexico by truck from its existing facility in George West. This plant is capable of delivering up to 50,000 gallons per day (29,018 tpy) of LNG to its new distribution hub for shipment to buyers in north-eastern Mexico.
Stabilis Energy hopes to expand its business in Mexico (Photo: Stabilis.)
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